Mona Nelson, accused of killing 12-year-old Jonathan Foster, in the courtroom for pretrial motions on Monday before beginning her capital murder trial this week on Monday, Aug. 12, 2013, in Houston. ( Mayra ... more

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Staff

Image 2 of 2

Photos of Jonathan Foster provided by his family. No more caption information available.

Photos of Jonathan Foster provided by his family. No more caption information available.

Photo: family photos

Mother describes effort to save her slain son

1 / 2

Back to Gallery

Angela Davis told a gripping story Wednesday about receiving cryptic phone calls from her 12-year-old son and a strange woman, racing home on her motor scooter that stalled and then breathlessly running the last 100 hundred yards on foot to her north Houston duplex.

But after fumbling with her key, she finally opened the door that Christmas eve in 2010 only to discover that her son had vanished seconds earlier.

Ominous phone calls

A half glass of cold milk sat on a table. Cartoons blared from the television and a computer game was loaded and ready to play. But the tin box filled with Tootsie Rolls left behind was what brought tears to Davis' eyes and made it hard for her to continue testifying in the capital murder trial of Mona Nelson, the woman accused in the killing of her red-headed fifth-grader, Jonathan Foster.

"It was a family tradition to pick one present to open before Christmas," she said, and her son had selected the candy from all the gifts, including a Wii game, that still sat unopened under the glowing lights of her tree.

But it was the ominous phone calls from a mysterious woman, initially to the meat market where she worked as a cashier, that provided Davis' last contact with her son and a fleeting link to his abductor.

The woman, whom witnesses described as angry and using foul language, demanded Davis' supervisors put her on the phone. The mysterious voice demanded the telephone number of the woman leasing the duplex where Davis and her son were staying.

Threatening message

One meat market supervisor, Lois Sims, testified about a particularly threatening message the unidentified woman left: "If you don't get her (on the phone) now something's going to happen. He (her son) won't be here for long."

Sims tried to comply with her request, but the woman hung up. Davis made repeated calls home and got no response until she was nearly at her back door. She didn't recognize the voice of the strange woman who answered the phone. Davis asked, "Is Jonathan there? It's his mother, Angela." Davis heard the woman ask her son, "Is she your mom?

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and the line went dead.

Before that night, Davis had never met Mona Nelson. She later learned the woman was a "drinking buddy" of the lease holder, Sharon Ennamorato, who had invited her over for Christmas eve dinner.

Defense attorney Allen Tanner pointed out that two supervisors had described the caller as a "white" woman, and Nelson is black.

The young boy's badly charred body was found four days later stuffed in a culvert at the bottom of a ditch a few miles away from the duplex.

In their opening arguments Wednesday, prosecutors promised they could show how, but not why, Nelson callously ended the life of the boy.

In the third day of proceedings, prosecutor Connie Spence said: "I'm going to hit on some big questions in this trial. But the why - the motive - there's not going to be one."

She then gave a lengthy and detailed accounting of what happened in the time leading up to the kidnaping, just minutes before his mother returned home from her job at a Houston meat market.

Bloodied sweatshirt

Spence said that one of the key pieces of evidence will be a sweatshirt that the boy's mother identified as her son's that also had Mona Nelson's blood on it and was found in a trash can by Nelson's house.

Tanner began his opening argument by stressing his client had "zero, zero motive to kill that boy.''

Davis, standing in the hallway and wearing a button with a picture of her red-headed son, said she had no idea why Nelson would want to kill her son. "The only thing I can say is that my justice will be given when she meets her maker. There's no telling why she would do this. She's just pure evil. She let Satan command instead of God.''

Nelson, a maintenance worker and former professional boxer, has pleaded not guilty and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.

The trial, expected to last two weeks, will resume Thursday before state District Judge Jeannine Barr.